Friday, April 22, 2011

San Cristobal de las Casas

I spent most of the next day catching up on the blog as we hadn't written anything since leaving Caye Caulker. We keep telling ourselves that we should do it as we go to save the mammoth sessions but sometimes, as has happened over the last 10 days, we just kept moving on. Jill spent the morning looking around San Cristóbal, which is a world heritage site and rather nice as you would expect. Here are some of the sights:- Templo de Santa Lucia.

Templo de San Francisco.

Pedestrian walkways.

The Cathedral.

Bandstand

Dances

Mayan Theatre.

Architecture.

Templo de San Cristóbal,

with gold leaf interior

and amazing pulpit

Crafts,

plus great coffee

We left San Cristóbal about 1100 and headed towards Guatemala where we had decided to see the splendours of Antigua over Semana Santa.

About us

Hi there,

Thank you for visiting our Blog of our motor bike travels through the Americas on a BMW R80 G/S.We hope you get as much pleasure reading it as we hope to have writing about our adventures. And of course we hope you will get in touch with us via the 'comments' box on the Blog.

For those of you who don't know us yet, we just thought we would take a moment to introduce ourselves.

First of all we are two middle aged youngsters having a gap year or more. The decision to up sticks and travel for a while had organic origins. For David, to see more the world, how other folks live and to challenge some of his own beliefs, has been an ambition for quite some time. For me travelling to other parts of the world has been one of those things I have wanted to do with my life, but with less philosophical questions in mind, more an inquisitiveness about places and people; the question was always when and how.

I guess also that lately both of us were beginning to question what after a combined 108 years on the planet, with most of that caught up in the work cycle, is it all about. Is it all about work and pension, or are there other ways of enriching our lives. I guess we may never know the answer to that conundrum, but we jointly felt that human life is short in the greater scheme of things, and it seemed to us that there is so much to see and do in the world.

It was not easy arriving at the decision to put on hold our lives as we knew it, in order to explore what it is possible to know about ourselves in the world. There were all sorts of compromises to make. Consequently, the decision took around 5 yrs from initial musings to a full blown plan. Well we say plan. There was no plan other than to travel. The decision about where and how to travel ranged from backpacking to sailing, to camper-vanning, and motorbiking. In the end we both enjoy biking and camping, having travelled extensively by bike through Europe, and we had an idea it might be fun to bike the Pan American Highway from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. And of course we needed to do it whilst we are still fit enough to handle a fully loaded bike and the challenges of camping.

So that was it. Given the green light David set about feverishly planning, whilst I completed my PhD which was finally submitted just as we departed.

And so as we pulled away from our home, waved off by our friends, began the realisation that it is possible to take our lives in a different direction, in the pursuit of understanding what.....it is all about.